Eating while you are shitting

E-mail received.

I am writing to introduce myself and see if you would be interested in talking with me.

My name is [redacted] and I am in Candidate Generation at Yahoo! for our Engineering, and I wanted to touch base with you to see if you might be open to hearing from us about opportunities we have currently.

I came across your resume on the web and I wanted to check in with you.…

My response

[redacted],

I’m currently the software architect for a profitable startup. I don’t honestly feel joining a large takeover target which just fired some of my friends to work as a front end developer would be a intelligent career move at the time.

I appreciate the offer and best of luck to you and Yahoo. I am a big fan of your products and the friends I have that still have a job there. Say hi if you see me around the Valley.

I got a cold call on Friday that started: “I wasn’t sure if you were one of the Yahoos that was laid off, or just worried about joining them in the future, but my company just wanted to offer our assistance…” I tried to be polite as I pointed out that I did not work at Yahoo.

They are like the guys who have to twirl around the big arrow signs for stores having sales or what not. Their jobs suck obviously, they can be very annoying at times, but they are just a harmless part of the ecosystem.

At least you don’t have recruiters calling/emailing you asking you if you would wrap your car in their company’s branding and come to work for them. That’s happened to me three times now, all from big name companies in the bay area. I still don’t know what to make of that.